In Through The Out Door On Day 3 we arrived at the furthest point of our trip, the 3 Islets, where Burma’s best dive site is located – In Through The Out Door. I remembered this place being spectacular from last year, both for its underwater topography – a stunning underwater ravine leading into a small tunnel before emerging onto a sloping reef – and for its teeming wildlife. I also remembered the viz being much better here than on the southern sites. As such, my heart sank a bit when we jumped in and the initial viz was super murky – it was about 3 metres max! However, once Clive located the entrance to the ravine, the viz immediately improved – and apparently this is almost always the case. Inside the opening of the ravine we found a massive Jenkins ray lurking under a rock and several beautiful nudibranches on the walls, before entering into the narrowest section. This area is around 15 metres deep and the light filters through from above, framed by the canyon’s wall and home to an vast school of fish – absolutely breathtaking.

Beyond the narrow part of the ravine lies the very short tunnel, which emerges after a few metres onto the reef. This is a simple slope that is clouded with lots of glassfish and the other usual tropical suspects, plus a lot of scorpionfish – you have to be careful any time you are taking a photo – and hordes of morays. A carpet of anemones billowed across the rocks, cuttlefish weaved in and out of the sea fans along with juvenile sweetlips doing their high-energy jitter. There’s so much going on that one dive is simply not enough to see it all, so doing the following dive in reverse (Out Through The In Door) also worked well.

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